Membership Websites

The advantages of a WordPress CMS are huge – you can easily upload new content, categorize it in your page structure, and organize pages and posts via tags. For premium content delivery, you can protect your best content from the general public by creating a membership site with WordPress. Membership websites create a members-only section of your website, where only your customers and registered users can read, watch, and download your best content.

Membership Website WordPress Overview

If you have a WordPress website, you know how to login to /wp-admin – you enter your username and password, and gain access to the back-end of the website.

There are many different permissions levels in WordPress. The 4 standard levels are:

Admin

Editor

Author

Subscriber

Each of these permissions levels gains access to different levels of functionality within your website. Admins can do anything and everything, including creating new users, changing core theme files, and more. Editors can publish content to make it live on the website, while Authors can create content, but cannot publish their changes.

You can use the Subscriber level to protect your premium content, or create another level for ‘Customer’ or ‘October Mastermind’ or ‘Community Member,’ and assign access to specific pieces of content in your website based on the user’s permission level.

What this means: You can designate any WordPress post or page as ‘private,’ meaning it is only accessible to logged-in users. You can designate which user levels can access certain pages, meaning that if you have a different user level for every product in your library, you just need to assign a specific user level to an account after a product is purchased in order to unlock access to that content.

How To Build Membership Websites

The easiest way to create membership websites is to download a membership plugin. Here are three good ones:

These out-of-the-box solutions allow users to register and gain access to select areas of your website, but they do not integrate with your shopping cart right away. It takes some work to get a specific membership level to co-ordinate with a specific product purchase, and getting the plugin to automatically generate a username and password, that already has the right login level, is the tricky part of the automation.

Easy Membership Website Trick

Do you have some premium content you would like to protect?

There is an easy way to make membership websites, baked into the WordPress CMS itself. It won’t create logins for users, but it will protect your content with a password.

Publish your premium content on your WordPress website as a standalone page. When you publish it, under Visibility don’t select Public (the default) or Private, select ‘Password Protected.’ Enter the password that users need to enter to access your content.

Now, if you want to deliver some premium content to your email newsletter subscribers, for example, you can send them the link and the password. It won’t be available to everyone on the internet, but only to those with the password.

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Hello! I'm Caelan Huntress.

I am an American expat living in New Zealand, and I have spent ten years running an online business while traveling the world with my young family. I'm a website designer, copywriter, and sales strategist who specializes in creating online courses and sales funnels for bestselling authors, business coaches, and professional public speakers.

1 - Logo

Is your logo professionally designed?

Did someone with proven graphic design skills make your logo?

Yes

No

Does your logo display at the exact same size as the image file?

If your logo image is being dynamically resized by the browser, it slows down your sitespeed and can make your logo look fuzzy. Ctrl+Click on your logo and click on ‘Open Image In New Tab.’ Is it the same size?

Yes

No

Does your logo have alt text with your brand name or a specific keyword set?

Hover over your logo with your cursor. Does a little yellow box show up displaying text?

Website Survey

Step 1 of 8

If you could solve this one thing, your life would be easier, sexier, and more fun:

Which of the following best describes you?

I’m just starting out and haven’t made my website yet.

I've got a website, but I don’t have much of an email list.

I have a website and a list, but I need to grow my business.

My website, list, and business are large and successful.

What platform do you use for your website?

WordPress

Squarespace

Custom HTML

Other

How is your website built?

Where do you get the most valuable, actionable information about websites and blogging?

Blog and website articles

Email newsletters

Facebook groups

Online courses

In-person events

Other

Please describe:

Roughly, what's the overall size of your business sales in annual gross revenue?

$0 - $15,000

$15,000 - $50,000

$50,000 - $100,000

$100,000 - $300,000

$300,000 - $1,000,000

$1,000,000 +

Who is your customer or demographic?

What are the key trigger words that let you know someone is the right match for your business?

What do you LIKE the most about having a website?

What do you DISLIKE the most about having a website?

Where are you struggling with right now?

Logo Design

Brand Design

Web Design

eCommerce

Content Creation

Blogging

Social Media

Online Course Creation

Membership Site Setup

List Building

Productivity

Sales Pages

Other

Please describe:

Finally, I may want to follow up with a few people personally to learn about your situation. If you'd be open to chatting for a few minutes on the condition that I promise not to sell you anything - please leave your name and phone number below.